When preparing a biomaterial, a monosaccharide is initially used. Biomass, which is a raw material for preparing the monosaccharide, is largely classified into carbohydrate (sugar cane, sugar beet, and the like), starch (corn, potato, sweet potato, and the like), lignocellulose (wood, rice straw, waste paper, and the like). The monosaccharide is directly prepared from the carbohydrate by performing a pre-treatment process and subsequent processes. The monosaccharide is prepared using the starch and the lignocellulose as a fuel by performing an appropriate pre-treatment process and a saccharification process.
When starch is used as an energy source, problems in supply and demand of its raw material may occur. Further, growing corn in order to obtain the starch requires a significantly large amount of agricultural pesticides and nitrogen fertilizer, thus severely damaging soil and discharging carbon dioxide and the like. The lignocellulose has secured stability in supply and demand of raw material since it is not useful for food. However, the processing cost of the lignocellulose is greater due to the pre-treatment process of removing lignin and strong acids. Further, strong bases are used in a saccharification process due to a crystalline structure in which hydrogen bonds are formed which is a characteristic of the lignocellulose cellulose substrates, such that either saccharification yield is low or by-products occur. Therefore, seaweed has recently received attention as biomass. Seaweed is largely classified into macroalgae and microalgae. Macroalgae includes red algae, brown algae, green algae, and the like, and microalgae includes chlorella, spirulina, and the like. Seaweed has remarkably excellent growth as compared to other biomasses (harvest 4 to 6 times in one year in a subtropical region), has a large available cultivation area, and high-priced resources such as freshwater, land, fertilizer, and the like, are used in small amounts. As compared to a land plant, structural characteristics of the seaweed having soft tissue allow the pre-treatment process to be easy, which is advantageous for utilization as an industrial biomass.
A process of preparing the monosaccharide by using seaweed as a raw material may be divided into the pre-treatment process in which a polysaccharide is prepared from the seaweed and the saccharification process in which the monosaccharide is prepared. In the saccharification process according to the related art, the monosaccharide is prepared by a degradation enzyme or chemical treatment on polysaccharide materials extracted from original seaweed or sea seeds. For example, galactose is extracted and prepared by the pre-treatment process from red algae from marine resources and the saccharification process in which the monosaccharide is prepared.
In order to prepare an agarose, an agar needs to be degraded, wherein the agar is a complex polysaccharide having a high density, from the red algae, such as ceylon moss to be utilized for various applications, such as food materials, microorganism culture mediums, cosmetics, molecular biological studies, and the like. The main components of the agar include agarose and agaropectin, which are generally contained at a ratio of about 7:3.
Existing technologies of preparing the monosaccharide use acidic chemical materials and enzymes to prepare the final monosaccharide, and therefore, development of a simple and a low-priced technology has been demanded.